Federal Government is set to enforce its directive to ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to buy Made-in-Nigeria goods as a matter of policy priority.
President Goodluck Jonathan has also directed the Minister of Trade and Investment to compile the list of goods currently being imported but which local companies can produce.
This, the president said, would enable government to grant incentives to the local companies to produce them and also enjoy government patronage.
This was a major highlight of the decisions reached at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting Wednesday, where the council also approved the printing of 40 million permanent voter cards to begin a phased replacement of the 73.5 million temporary ones.
FEC also announced that Nigeria’s economy is now regarded as the third fastest growing in the world, after Mongolia and China.
Briefing journalists after the meeting yesterday, Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, and the Minister of State for Finance, Alhaji Yerima Lawal Ngama, said the president directed MDAs to list those items that they would be procuring this year and sort out those that should be sourced locally.
“You will recollect that last year, the president directed that all procurements must first focus on Made-in-Nigeria goods, that all items that are produced locally must first be considered in the public procurement exercise at least in the federal level. This is to encourage local producers and to also encourage the creation of jobs within the economy for the unemployed and school leavers.
“The president noted in council that in spite of this directive, MDAs are yet to fully implement it. So he asked all MDAs as we prepare for the 2012 budget year, they should list out in our procurement plans those things that should be procured locally. This is to ensure that we encourage local producers and also encourage domestic economic growth. He also directed the Minister of Trade and Investment to prepare a plan for those items, goods and services that we have the local capacity to produce but which we are lagging behind. This will enable the government, through the economic management team, to sort out those items that we must deliberately set out to encourage local producers to produce within the country.
“You will also recall that the president has directed that for those big suppliers that tap on the huge Nigerian market, there will be a need for them to begin to look into the need for them to transit from importation to local production and assembling of those goods in Nigeria to meet the needs of our market. For the memos we will be presenting to council in the next one year, we must show evidence that if we are taking something completely from outside Nigeria, we should show that there are no suitable local alternatives. This is important to the growth and development of Nigeria’s economy,” Maku explained.
The contract for permanent voter cards, which was awarded to Messrs ACT Technologies Ltd., has a delivery period of seven months.
The card, which has an average life span of 10 years, is designed with security features for easy voter identification and checking multiple voting, according to FEC. The card will come into use in 2015.
The ministers said the council was briefed on the performance of the Nigerian economy which they claimed had recorded substantial improvement to the extent that the World Bank had removed Nigeria from the list of poor economy.
Ngama said at the just-concluded Annual General Meeting of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Khartoum, Sudan, an assessment of the indices of various member economies revealed that Nigeria was the third fastest growing economy in the world behind Mongolia and China.
He said out of the 46 countries that submitted their reports, Nigeria was among the ones which got attention as its performance was the third best, while those economies that were more developed than Nigeria recorded slower growths.
Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as at December 2011, he said, was in excess of N10 trillion.
At the IDB meeting, Nigeria was singled out as an economy where private sector participation was driving the economy, giving it more strength than other economies for investors.
Ngama said: “I presented a report on the presentation made at the 37th Annual General Meeting of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). The bank has 56-member countries and at Annual General Meeting, each country is expected to present a report on the economic development in the country. The aim is to educate ourselves about what is happening in our countries. In the case of Nigeria, our report was actually the best. For the year, for the quarter which ended on 31st December, 2011, only about 46 countries have actually submitted their data and Nigeria was third in terms of GDP growth. We recorded a GDP growth of 7.68 per cent in real terms and this is largely due to growth in the non-oil sector.
“The previous year, 2010, the GDP growth was 8.4 per cent but last year, it dropped to 7.68 per cent because we had a negative growth in the oil sector. So, it means that the non-oil sector is actually resilient and strong enough to carry the economy forward with or without the oil sector. This actually placed us as the third fastest growing economy in the world. The first being Mongolia with 14.9 per cent real growth rate, then China with 8.4 per cent real GDP growth rate followed by Nigeria with 7.68 per cent.
“But the more important story out of it is that as a nation, we have our vision 20:2020. We have the objective of having one of the world’s 20 strongest economies by the year 2020. All the other countries apart from China that are ahead of Nigeria are growing at a slower rate than Nigeria. When those ahead of you are growing slower, it means that in the next eight years, we will achieve our objective of being one of the strongest economies in the world. As at last December, our total GDP was more than N10 trillion and that is a growth that is unprecedented despite our challenges. We are lucky to get a board seat in the Islamic Corporation for the development of the private sector which is like the private sector arm of the IDB and Nigeria will be representing Africa on that board.”
Asked what the figure meant to an average Nigerian and whether the ranking as the third fastest growing economy has positively impacted on the lives of the person on the street, Ngama said per capita income of Nigerians had increased from $1,200 to $1,400 per annum which prompted the World Bank to move Nigeria from the low-income to medium-income country.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/fg-set-to-enforce-patronage-of-made-in-nigeria/113554/
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